The Edge of the Preserve
by GrimlyFiendish
Summary: What really happened to Noland? and what is the story behind his elusive friend? Oneshot.   Please read and REVIEW!


**The Edge of the Preserve**

_I understand that there is a prequel comic book series to what happens to Royce and to Noland, but I haven't read them, so I made this up to fill in the space._

_Enjoy._

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"The first two seasons, no _three _seasons I was here, I was walking in the same direction, trying to reach the edge of the preserve..."

* * *

There were only five of them left.

They were well-trained, professional killers, the best on their planet. They had been picked off, one by one, in the same casual manner that a movie-goer eats their popcorn. For them to become trophies for their alien tormentors to show off to their mates, or left to _hang_ around, giving a futile warning to the next season's prey.

There _were _only five of them left.

x

Emmett Franklin was woken by the feel of something dripping into his hair. Half-awake, he brought his hand up to his head, he was fully awake when he brought his hand down and saw the blood on it. He didn't remember suffering a head injury lately and his head didn't hurt, so he concluded that it wasn't his blood, but how did it get on his head? Realisation hitting him like a tonne of bricks, he looked up from the jungle floor of their small, improvised campsite, up the expanse of unnaturally quiet foliage, into the inverted, skinless face of yet another of the alien hunter's grisly trophies.

Startled to his feet, he saw the rest of the area they had chosen as a resting place that night, or rather he didn't.

The place had been turned into a bloodbath during the night; it looked as though the remainder of the humans on the whole planet had been put in a giant blender missing its lid and ground into pulp, the largest remains of them hanging from the trees as testament to what had done it.

But there were only three corpses, give or take a few limbs, there had been five of them when he had gone to sleep, that left one. Either one of the group had been in such a bad state that he couldn't be strung up in a large enough piece, or there was someone else alive.

Ronald Noland was woken by the sound of someone panicking, mumbling incoherent solutions to unknown problems. When he saw the cause of Franklin's distress, he jumped to his feet, bewildered.

Franklin looked up, stunned. Noland had just jumped up out of nowhere. Despite the present situation, he was relieved; his current status had gone from the only living human on the planet, to one of two. It took a huge weight off his chest to know that he hadn't been condemned to die helplessly alone so far from home.

Noland was astonished as he absorbed the situation they were now in. The alien hunters had paid them a visit during the night, but they weren't dead. The killers that they had been surrounded by had died so horribly without even enough sound to wake either of them from their troubled sleep. The alien bastards had strolled in, shredded all but the two of them, and left.

"We need to get out of here." Noland stated with an ever so slight quiver in his voice, trying his best to look for any supplies that were salvageable.

"Yeah," Franklin replied. They had both come to terms with the fact that they wouldn't be getting home, but they weren't just going to give themselves up when the going got rough.

x

It had been just the two of them for about what could be called a week now. No other signs of life. No humans, no animals, no other prey; but at least no more predators.

They had started off in one direction, thinking that maybe if they were far enough away the aliens would lose interest. Although, they had been right there that night back at the camp, they had been ignored.

Noland was hoping that they had been ignored, but the more he thought about it, the more he suspected something more sinister. These aliens were more than capable of taking out a platoon of men with ease, they were strong, and they were smart. Tactics were definitely not new to the ugly brutes, so what if this was one of their plans to further the challenge of their hunt? Although he just couldn't figure out how letting the two of them get away was any sort of reasonable tactic.

Franklin wasn't doing anywhere near as well as Noland was. The man had lost all ability of stealth, and didn't seem to care that, if the reason the aliens hadn't got to them yet, was indeed that they had slipped by undetected; his incessant rambling would be their downfall.

x

"You're gonna get us into some real deep shit, man." Noland had had enough. The both of them had lost all track of time, but it had been too long. Noland snapped. "You've been nothing but a pain, you're not helping this situation, and I'm sick of it."

Franklin wasn't going down without a fight. "I don't see how it matters, what are we doing? We're waiting to die. We've got nothing; it doesn't matter whether or not we slipped past those things. We are stuck on this planet, this game preserve. We're not going anywhere."

x

The next morning, Noland woke with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Franklin was gone. It wasn't the same as the morning the rest of them died, Franklin wasn't hanging by his feet above him, but this time he felt worse; there was no one else left, he was now the only living human on the planet.

Until he spotted the parachutes, coming down in the distance.

* * *

"Let me tell you something, there ain't no edge of the preserve."

* * *

_Grimlyfiendish_


End file.
